School Days

06.25.13

In Education, Separate Is Not Equal

The ACLU fights against harmful gender segregation in classrooms.

As a number of public schools push for gender-segregated classes based on the belief that boys and girls learn differently, the American Civil Liberties Union has chosen to sue districts in several states. They argue that this method relies on “harmful gender stereotypes.” There is no solid, scientific evidence supporting the idea that boys and girls have different brains and therefore learn better separately, and the methods in some of these segregated classrooms may actually hurt the children’s education: in some, “girls are taught about chemistry by analyzing detergents” and boys aren’t asked to write book reports because of perceived “lesser verbal abilities.”